Do you want to know how to make your content more accessible and gain popularity? You need to keep reading!
Today, over 1 billion people in the world encounter barriers when trying to read and understand content online. This can be due to disabilities, learning difficulties, visual impairments, or if people speak English as a second language.
This is why making your videos, articles, website and content accessible is so important. You can reach more people and even gain followers.
Failing to provide an inclusive space can have a bad impact on your business or personal content if you have a big platform. All you need to do to make it more inclusive is add text to speech.
What’s text to speech?
Text to Speech (TTS) is an assistive technology capable of reading digital text. This technology is also known as “read aloud” tech. TTS reads words on a digital device like a smartphone or computer with a touch or a click and converts them into speech or audio.
It can read different text formats such as PDF, Word, Doc, Pages, etc., and works on various digital devices.
Text-to-speech solutions provide improved digital accessibility to populations with learning and speech disabilities, visual impairments, and low literacy challenges across devices and platforms. If you include the audio of your content like you can with Woord your organization’s message will be clear and comprehensible to everyone.
Why Woord?
Woord is a free online TTS that has a number of useful features. It is available in over 50 languages, including several English dialects, Portuguese dialects, and Spanish dialects. You can also select a male, female, or gender-neutral voice. All of these features are available for free, allowing you to test the service before investing in the premium version.
The free edition includes premium voices, a Chrome plugin, an SSML editor, an MP3 download, and up to 20,000 characters per month. You can also change the speed and format of the voice with this software.
Woord´s vocal characteristics allow you to use it in a variety of situations. You can use Woord´s Text-to-Speech (TTS) functionality to create applications that assist people with reading difficulties, such as those used in E-learning and education.
Woord, also can be used to assist the blind and visually impaired in consuming digital information such as eBooks and newspapers, but it can also be used in a variety of devices such as set-top boxes, smartwatches, tablets, and smartphones.
How to use it?
Woord‘s interface is designed in a simple way to be intuitive for the user. With these simple steps you will be able to generate quality audio:
1- In the format you prefer, write or upload the content you want to convert to speech (it can be an image, PDF, text file, blog, or a variety of other formats).
2- Select the language, voice gender (male or female), and pace. (From within the PDF, you can also choose where to begin playing.)
3- You can listen to or download your audio recording as an MP3 file online.
Also published on Medium.